For The Record: We get the significance, the impact and all that we may never agree on as a collective community, when it comes down to the guarantee for Morgan’s Point, and the new airport.
We get that they will forever be the last vestiges of the former One Bermuda Alliance government.
We also get the fact that long before all that, after 14 years, Bermuda’s electorate said to hell with the Progressive Labour party’s leadership in 2012.
Despite what history would tell you, the former OBA administration won that election by default. And the PLP didn’t see their defeat coming.
And, as predicted by their counterparts, the OBA became that one-trick pony anticipated.
Why? The Progressive Labour Party’s voter base simply shut down and shut all their rhetoric out. They went quiet, and then quietly, they turned their backs on the polls.
The real joke in certain higher circles, where news that never makes the news always flows unofficially, the PLP never saw it coming.
Now here we are in 2023, and they’re back in full effect, still promising the people’s so-called mandate, but never delivering on what the people re-elected them to do?
In real time, we are now pushing up on decades when it comes to a promise they have failed to deliver while the talking continues!
How long has it been since the PLP promised to deliver Comprehensible Immigration Reform? How expedient would that be amid our ongoing population decline?
To date, what has the latest Minister of Economy and Labour, Jason Hayward, another one of Premier David Burt’s clan, done exactly to make Comprehensive Immigration Reform a reality?
Remember – he was appointed after Wayne Caines was fired, and he too, has yet to deliver!
And then we have the promise of Financial Assistance Reform, first touted years ago by former PLP Cabinet Minister Zane DeSilva. who assigned a committee to tackle the changes needed.
Sure, small changes were implemented, but where’s the reform promised?
Back then, like now, taxpayers were paying out more than a million dollars a week, to the tune of more than $4 million a month for Financial Assistance.
Not much changed during the global COVID-19 pandemic on that tip either.
It’s also worth mentioning that Mr DeSilva, like Mr Caines, eventually fell from the Premier’s good graces with all that partying at Blu, while the rest of the community was on lockdown.
Don’t even begin to think about that infamous video with Mr Caines dancing in those skintight red skinny jeans – not to mention his very own “titty milk” comment he posted himself on social media!
Some political pundits still say Wayne Caines, who cut his own throat so to speak, and bent a whole heap of Bermuda’s female community out of shape ferociously – should have been fired instantly back then.
Fast forward to 2023 and here we are, in the midst of the first year of the post pandemic COVID season.
It’s all fine and good for the Premier to rehash the record on Bermuda’s new multi-million-dollar airport, and all that goes with that infamous contract tied to it.
But the fact of the matter is this is 2023, heading into 2024. What is the plan besides talking?
Bermuda’s tourism product, in terms of putting real heads in beds; whatever our hotel capactiy numbers have been lacking substantially have not changed to any real degree in years – make that decades!
And then there’s the issue of airlift – another area lacking to the point where we have airlines opting to bump Bermuda in favour of higher numbers bound for the Caribbean and other regions.
We heard all the rush for this yet to put in place guarantee to get Southampton Princess back up and running.
But frankly, let’s be honest, when have you heard of anyone renovating a building 50 years-old or more?
Anyone with half an ounce of common sense, whether or not they jump across the river to gamble, knows full well that even in Los Vegas they implode hotels with casinos and replace them after 25 – 30 years.
Why are we even talking about renovating the building with, or without a guarantee?
There are unconfirmed reports running rampant, that the engineers brought in by the developers reportedly relayed, in no uncertain terms, that the steel erected in that building was done. It outlived it’s user expiration date and must be replaced – in other words, knocked down – demolished.
No official word on that assessment yet. But then again, the terms of that pressing guarantee that was so urgent back in August of last year, have yet to be revealed either.
It reminds you of the urgent amendments governing Bermuda’s Gaming Commission.
How many years did it take again, to find out the initial legislation fell short, to the tune of how many millions to the island’s taxpayers over how many years? Go check the record and see what the timeline is.
Does that qualify as another promise that has yet to materialise after all these years – because of who exactly? Who got it wrong in the first place?
Clearly that would be someone in that already broken Civil Service. The other broken entity, now pushing more than a century’s worth of unaudited financial statements constantly put out by the Auditor General.
That would be the reports, or lack thereof, on your public purse by this latest crew, who’; like all other administrations to date, have failed collectively to address, deal with, or fix this ongoing mess!
There was a leadership challenge not too long ago, when the Premier convinced PLP delegates that he was the man for the job.
So said, so done!
Now we have roughly three years with the man for the job.
Know what your electorate want to know? What’s the plan moving forward between now and then?
But then again, chances are when the time comes – the man for the job probably won’t even make another run.
Remember, all he asked for was another term!
If they were taking bets, the best bet would be the scene when he rides off into the sunset without a scratch and leave this mess, and then here comes another one!
Go ask the electorate and the general consensus would be they are tired and so over all of it!
Then wonder why you see so many Bermudians leaving constantly, daily – in droves!
Maybe by then you would have figured out just who would be left holding the bag! Then you best go check your passport’s expiration date!
Ceola Wilson, Executive Producer, BermudaReal.com
